Cancer physicians say Lockerbie bomber wasn't near death

Two prominent cancer specialists told a Senate hearing on Wednesday that they disagreed with the assessment of Scottish authorities that Pan Am 103 bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was near death at the time of his release from prison for compassionate reasons.

Dr. Oliver Sartor, medical director of the Tulane Cancer Center in New Orleans, La., said a video showing al-Megrahi walking down stairs during his triumphant return to Tripoli, Libya, showed that the convicted bomber wasn’t near death.

“A man who walks down a steep flight of stairs off a plane on his own accord, then mingles and greets the crowd, certainly does not fit the description of someone on the verge of death from prostrate cancer,” Sartor said.

Patients who have less than three months to live, as al-Megrahi was said to be by the Scottish government, are typically unable to walk without assistance, Sartor said. They are often bed-ridden because of pain, weakness, and weight loss related to advanced cancer.

Dr. James L. Mohler, chair of the Urology Department at Roswell Cancer Center, Buffalo, N.Y., added that he was not “the least bit surprised” that al-Megrahi is still alive and that it should come as absolutely no surprise to the cancer specialists who cared for al-Megrahi, either.

Both physicians testified before a panel of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The witnesses had not treated the convicted bomber but based their comments on the video and on medical records.

Al-Megrahi was convicted by a Scottish court in 2001 of 270 counts of murder for the 1989 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. The court sentenced him to life in imprisonment in Scotland. In September 2008, while in prison, al-Megrahi was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer. He underwent chemotherapy starting in July 2009 and was released on Aug. 20, 2009, on compassionate grounds after a Scottish physician, Dr. Peter Kay, declared that he had less than three months to live. He then returned home to Libya.

The time between al-Megrahi’s chemotherapy and his release was not sufficient to evaluate the effectiveness of the treatment, Mohler said. But even without chemotherapy, al-Megrahi was likely to live more than a year, both physicians said.

“I also believe that any physician with training and experience in prostate cancer would find a three-month prognosis for a patient in Mr. al-Megrahi’s condition difficult to believe and possibly even ridiculous,” Mohler said.

Kay was a general practitioner, not a cancer specialist, Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., chairman of the panel, told the hearing.

Would a general practitioner be qualified to make such an assessment? Menendez asked the two U.S. physicians.

“No, it’s a rapidly evolving field,” Sartor said. “There’s a science behind it and it’s not in the purview of a general practitioner.”

Menendez and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., questioned whether British and Scottish authorities had released al-Megrahi for economic and political reasons and suggested that British oil-producer BP had benefited from al-Megrahi’s release because, according to that theory, it opened the doors to lucrative oil deals in Libya.

Representatives from the Scottish government, the British government and from BP refused to testify in the hearing.

Kenny MacAskill, the Scottish secretary of justice, has repeatedly said there was no contact between BP and Scottish authorities about releasing al-Megrahi and that the decision was based solely on judicial grounds, without political or economic consideration.

Nancy McEldowney, a State Department official, told the panel that the department “has no evidentiary basis to dispute or disprove these statements.”

Nonetheless, she said, the U.S. government believes “that the decision to release al-Megrahi back to Libya was a grievous mistake.”